About one week after the rebellion and looting that took place in South-Central Los Angeles as a result of the Rodney King verdict, I was watching the news when a young man was handcuffed and placed in a police car. The announcer said, “The son of slain Black Panther leader Fred Hampton has been arrested on charges of looting in last week’s riots.” For a quick moment my mind rocked. The son of Fred Hampton living and looting in SouthCentral L.A. How could this be? How is it that of all the people rebelling, the police were instantly able to pick out the son of Fred Hampton? I relived the past anger that seems constantly to be at the forefront of black people’s lives. Will society ever wake up? Will racism and inequality ever be abandoned? In the brief moment the son of Fred Hampton appeared on my television screen, I saw him as a nice-looking, angry black man and I wondered was he like his charismatic father? Did he stand for revolution? Did he hope to help the people? What has he been doing all these years? Questions I might never have answers to, yet, I will always wonder …
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January 2011
Stan Musial, the great St. Louis Cardinals outfielder, was close to murderous with a bat in his hand. His fellow Hall of Famer and opposing pitcher Warren Spahn said, “When Musial came up to hit, your infielders were in jeopardy.” He was known as “the Man,” a name given him by groaning Brooklyn fans convinced that whenever the Cardinals took on the Bums, Musial appeared at the plate in every pressure situation. “Oh, no. Here comes that Man again.” But I remember him as the Man for a different reason. Nineteen forty-six. Wrigley Field, Chicago. August. Musial and his Cards were in town to play the Cubs. The Cubs had won the pennant the year before with World War Two rejects: youngsters and might-have-beens and old guys who soon went back to running their retirement gas stations. But now the big boys were back from the war, and the Cards were playing hard for big-league stakes, trying to catch the leading Brooklyn Dodgers.
The political changes of Eastern Europe in 1989 enthralled me, and I was particularly interested in what was going on in Germany, for I would be making my first trip there the following summer. To me, Germany was the embodiment of European division, a division symbolized by the Berlin Wall. Along with ten other students from Villanova University, I was to attend a language course in 1990 in Freiburg, West Germany. One weekend was set aside for a trip to Berlin, and all of us were excited about this because we would be there the day of the Roger Waters’s concert The Wall . We spent our first afternoon in the city sleeping off the fatigue of a fourteen-hour ride in a railroad baggage car (a lot of people wanted to see The Wall concert; the only “seats” we could find were the floor of the car). Later on that night we visited the Brandenburg Gate. The Berlin Wall, which had once barred the West’s access to the monument, was already dismantled in this area of the city, the only trace a scar on the ground where it once stood.
Fifty years ago the first GIs arrived in England. We’ve all read of the mighty doings of the bomber boys and their little friends in the P-47s and P-SIs, but no one as far as I know has made great mention of the transports, the C-47s and the Waco CG-4a gliders that they pulled. I was a teen-ager at grammar school in Newbury, and they were our heroes. The aerodromes seemed to spring up in western Berkshire almost overnight: Aldermaston and Harwell, both now United Kingdom atomic-energy establishments; Membury, lost under the motorway to Wales and its service area; Hampstead Norris and Welford, reverted to the farmland they once were. Only Greenham Common survives there on its plateau just south of Newbury. They were all built to the World War II standard: two or three runways, depending on the available real estate, the longest going west into the prevailing winds; the control tower; the collection of little stove-heated huts that were offices, living quarters, and hospitals; and the sand-filled firing butts—repeated many times all over the U.K.
The simple flip of a coin between two young naval officers in Motor Torpedo boats in the South Pacific could have produced very different results for both. I won. Had I lost, I’m convinced neither of us would have survived the events that ensued, and American history would have been very different.
One of us—John F. Kennedy—proceeded to a near-fatal collision with a Japanese destroyer. He was an excellent swimmer (far better than I) and led all but two of his crew to eventual rescue. The story of the loss of his boat, PT-109, is well known; my boat, PT-IlO, was blown up later in New Guinea with a heavy loss of life. Having been in combat areas months longer than Kennedy, I had been posted stateside when my boat was lost. Kennedy would have been aboard.
Contact the North of Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau (1-800-742-5306) for material on Salem and the nearby seafaring communities that make up the North Shore. The Salem Chamber of Commerce (508-744-0004) will provide maps, a calender of local events, and lists of accommodations. I found the Salem Inn comfortable and well located (1-800-446-2995). In Salem twenty-five museums and historical houses are open to the public, lending color to the dual stories of witchcraft and maritime adventure. The world-renowned Peabody Museum holds some three hundred thousand items—treasure either brought back by the mariners from their journeys or relating to their craft. The greatest draw in town is the House of the Seven Gables, believed to be the inspiration for Hawthorne’s novel by the same name. It’s the one place you’re likely to feel rushed and crowded. More relaxing is the tour of three houses owned by the Essex Institute, which includes a look at the GardnerPingree House, a newly restored Federal masterpiece by the local architect and craftsman Samuel McIntire.
So many of the places we’ve visited during the course of writing this column appear to be, as we try not to say very often, “frozen in time.” That is, the town or city achieved one summary moment, then the river of history or the tributary that washed its shores changed course or silted in. What is left for the traveler is one nearly perfect American Pompeii.
Columbus Day, 1992, is finally here, amid the explosive echoes of the long debate over whether it should be celebrated at all, and if so, how. It has been my pleasure to stay more or less above the battle. Actually, Columbus has never been a special hero to me, possibly in reaction to having some terrible glorifying verses by Joaquin Miller forced down my schoolboy throat. “Sail on!” was their chief refrain; “sail on and on!” And so they did, for a seeming eternity. We really don’t know much about Columbus except that he was a skilled sailor, brave or bullheaded enough to test in person the theory that you could reach the East by sailing west. But the idea of a round earth didn’t originate with him, and he grotesquely underestimated its size. He was also vainglorious, greedy, fanatical, and cruel.
Oliver Evans did not live to see railroads. He died in 1819, and the first real American railroad line, the Baltimore & Ohio, was begun only in 1828.
But, in another sense, he saw railroads very clearly indeed. Just look at what he wrote in 1813: “The time will come when people will travel in stages [i.e., stagecoaches] moved by steam engines, from one city to another, almost as fast as birds fly....A carriage will set out from Washington in the morning, the passenger will breakfast in Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia and sup at New York on the same day....To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid...to guide the carriage, so that they may pass each other in different directions and travel by night as well as by day.”